Friday afternoon on Mercer Street was quieter than Reeve and cleaner than Holt.
The house had a fresh lockbox and a porch that had been swept for the showing. Ethan got there ten minutes early. He wore the shirt he had bought with his own money. Not the mixer black. Not anything from Veronica’s closet.
Sophia was on the sidewalk with a folder and a coffee she had not finished. She looked him over once.
"That will do. They’re already inside. He talks. She decides. Don’t perform for me. If the floor is bad, say the floor is bad."
"I walked it this morning. I know which parts are lying."
"Then don’t wait for me to ask."
The couple were in the front room. He still had his jacket on and his phone in his hand, the way men stood when they had already decided the afternoon was a favor. She was a few years younger, hair pulled back, one hand on the back of a chair she had not been offered. Read the Room sorted them before the hello finished.
[Husband: money, already bored]
[Wife: decision]
[Lie in the room: the asking price]
[Do not sell her. Tell her.]
"This is Ethan," Sophia said. "He walked the last two for me. If something is wrong, he says it."
The husband smiled without looking up from the phone. "We like the light. That’s most of what we came to see."
"The light is real," Ethan said. "The price isn’t. The back bedroom window sticks. Somebody painted over the swollen frame and called it finished. The kitchen floor under the sink gives if you stand on it. If you pay asking, you’re paying for the photos."
The husband finally looked at him. "You’re, what, a student? Sophia, I thought we were walking a house, not getting a lecture from the help."
Sophia did not step in.
The wife turned her head. Not at her husband. At Ethan. "Say that again. The floor."
Ethan walked into the kitchen and put his weight where the board had gone soft that morning. It dipped. He moved his foot so she could see the line of it.
"There. It’s not the cabinets. Those are fine. It’s this. Water sat under the sink long enough to make the subfloor tired. A flip covers that with a rug in the photos."
She stood where he had stood. The board moved under her shoe. She looked at her husband, then at Sophia.
"He told you this before we got here?"
"He told me this morning," Sophia said. "I wanted you to hear it in the room."
The husband put his phone away. He was annoyed now, which was better than bored. "Every house has something. That’s not a reason to cut the price in half."
"I’m not cutting it in half," Ethan said. "I’m telling you what you’re buying. If the number moves, the house is fine. If it doesn’t, there are cleaner ones two streets over, and I can walk those too."
Clean Ask held the sentence steady. The wife heard a person who had been in the building. The husband heard the same thing a second later and did not like that he had.
They did the rest of the house without the phone. Ethan showed the window. He said he had not been on the roof and would not guess. The wife asked what he would pay. He named a number under asking and left it there.
On the porch, the husband was already calling someone. The wife stayed at the rail.
"Most people your age try to impress whoever is paying them," she said. "You didn’t. If this price moves, we’ll be back. If it doesn’t, I still want your name. I’m tired of being shown the photos first."
"Ethan Sterling. Sophia has it."
She nodded at Sophia and went down the steps.
Sophia waited until the car was gone.
"Three hundred hits today. You didn’t freeze, and you didn’t pick a fight with him when he called you the help. That was the test." She handed him a folded slip. Saturday. Nine. A club, not campus. "Mitchell will be there. His wife usually is. Ryan may be. You stand next to me. You answer if someone asks you something. You do not touch anyone. I mean that more than I meant it in the lobby."
"I heard you."
"Reeve is still not an invitation." She put her sunglasses on. "Saturday is work. If you show up looking like you came to settle something with a boy, I’ll send you home before the coffee."
She left him with the address and the three hundred already moving.
[Walkthrough complete]
[Reward: 400 CP]
[Cash: +$300]
[Current CP: 4,450]
[Cash on hand: $2,800]
[Status room: small. Wife heard you. Husband did not own the room.]
[Level 3 still needs Saturday.]
Veronica was in the kitchen when he got home, laptop open, a glass of water she had not touched. Isabella was on the stairs and did not bother pretending she had just come down.
"Sophia said the showing was clean," Veronica said. "I still want it from you."
"They liked the light. The floor under the sink is soft. I said so. She paid me for the afternoon."
Veronica looked at the shirt, then at his face. Whatever had happened in the office stayed where she had put it.
"She is taking you to a breakfast tomorrow. David Mitchell will be there. I am not going to tell you not to go. If you embarrass this house in front of that man, I will hear it before you get back."
"I’m going for the work."
"Then go for the work." She closed the laptop. "Eat something. You have been in other people’s houses all day."
Isabella waited until the upstairs door shut.
"Alex is going to ask where you were. I’m telling her it was a showing. Don’t add a Chapter to that when you come downstairs."
"That’s all it was."
"Today." She knocked his shoulder on the way to the kitchen, not quite a joke. "Tomorrow just don’t make Mom spend the night on the phone. She’s already pretending she isn’t waiting for one."
Ethan went up and put the Saturday slip on the desk.
The System did not rank him.
[Status room: not cleared]
[Saturday: David Mitchell]
[His wife is likely in the room]
[Do not thaw Veronica.]
He had three hundred new dollars and a woman who had asked for his name after her husband called him the help.
Tomorrow the room would be bigger.
He was not going to explain that at dinner.